City students are out of control

If you were in Baltimore anywhere near a school on the Wednesday afternoon when schools let out early because of heat, you saw yet another example of an ineffective and incompetent segment of city government.

School age children were let out on city streets to behave rudely and inappropriately because they simply have not been taught any better. On the transit bus, as woman asked a child if he was going home to do homework. He responded, "We not goin' home." In downtown, a street corner in South Baltimore was inundated with students of the Digital Harbor High School who were so wild that the Circulator driver refused to pick them up. These out-of-control youths flooded into local stores, yelling obscenities and disturbing customers. Yet they all had just enough education to talk back to the shop owners when asked to leave.

These children are the product of a school system that has defined bad behavior as a form of cultural expression. It is a school system run by a government that rewards patronage rather then character. It is a system condemning these children to a life of poverty for the simple reason that it cannot tell these children, "Stop!"